Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Travel Light, Part 3: Letting Go of Bitterness

Episode Date: December 16, 2018

When the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it can feel like you’re going nowhere in a hurry. Shake off the burdens of stress, worry, and regret and find the freedom that comes when you Travel Light. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, thanks for joining us here at Life Church. Before we get into this week's message, I'd love to invite you, your friends, and your family to join us for one of our many services this Christmas at all of our life church locations to find the location that's closest to you, plus a full list of service times. You can go to life.church slash Christmas. Now let's join up with our senior pastor, Craig O'Shell, for this part of his message called Travel Life. Hey, it's great to have all of you with us today from all of our life churches, our open network churches, our family all over the world at Church Online.

We're in a message series that's called Traveling Light. What do we know? We know that this world is not our home. We are created for more. The problem is, as we travel through this life, we often accumulate so much stuff that weighs us down, holds us back, and it ultimately doesn't matter. Today, I've got good news for you.

We've got a very important topic to let go of something. something that is destructive. And today, I'm going to have a little bit of help. I'm going to team teach with your campus pastor. So I'm going to introduce the big theme, and then you're going to help me welcome your pastor. To introduce our theme for today, I want to give you a couple of verses from the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 and 15, very important verses. The author to the Hebrew says this. We are to make every effort. Everybody say every effort. We're to make every effort to live at peace with everyone. How many of you would say, honestly, that you've noticed some people take a little more effort to live at peace with than others. I know I have those

people in my life. Scripture says, make every effort to live at peace with everyone and to be holy. Scripture says, see to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. In fact, I'm convinced that one of our spiritual enemy's greatest tools to destroy relationships and poison hearts is what the Bible calls a root of bitterness. What do we know? We know that our God wants us to love, but our enemy wants to kill love and intimacy in relationships. We know that. We know that our God wants us to love, we know that God wants us to grow in trust, but our enemy wants to steal trust and leave us bitter. In fact, I believe that our enemy will do everything possible to plant a seed of a fence

in the hearts of people that will grow up into a root of bitterness. Let me say it again. I believe that our spiritual enemy wants to plant small little seeds of a fence that will grow up and mature, into a root of bitterness. It could be something really, really small, like you have a friend on Instagram and you always like her post and you always comment on her post.

And then one day you realize she hasn't been liking yours and she hasn't been commenting on yours and you'll learn her what's saying why she doesn't like them and why she doesn't comment and then you look and you realize that she has unfollowed you?

A seed of offense that leads to a root of bitterness. Something small. You text your friend and your friend doesn't text. back and you saw when your text went through that bubbles actually started and then the bubbles went away. And a little seed of a fence grows into a root of bitterness. It could be the Christmas meal and every year the same person doesn't bring any food, but always brings Tupperware and takes a full meal home, a seed of a fence that grows into a root of bitterness.

It could be something real and more significant. Someone that you look at a full meal home, a seed of a fence that grows into a root of bitterness. It could be something real and more significant. someone that you love lies to you, deceives you, or talks bad about you, the seed of offense that grows into a root of bitterness. It's the relative that's always critical of you, everything you do, the way you raise your kids, the way you spend money, even where you worship. You go to that church and worship like that, and you just get so sick and tired of the criticism. It could be the person that takes advantage of you, misleads you, or betrays you, or betrays you. And you realize there is a seed of offense that's growing into a root of bitterness. Let me give you our key thought for today, and then I'm going to hand this over to your local campus pastor. The big thought for the day we need to recognize is this.

You can't control what people do, but you can control how you respond. You can't control what they think about you, what they say about you, what they do to you. but the good news is with God's help and by his power, you can control how you respond. I hope you'll respond with passion. Would you please help me welcome your campus pastor? Life Church! It is humbling to be able to communicate God's word along with Pastor Craig.

Incredible series that he launched us into. And if you're anything like me, the last two weeks, totally read my mail. I think we underestimate the image. the impact that stuff and distraction have on keeping us from God's best for our lives. And today's message, it's probably one of the most timely things we could be talking about because there are some of you right now super excited about Christmas, and some of you cannot wait for it to be over.

Why? Because whatever emotional state you are currently in, it magnifies this time of year. If things are good in your life right now, you know what? The lights just twinkle brighter, don't they? And the carbs just taste a little bit sweeter and Christmas just a little bit more magical. It's awesome. However, for those of you experiencing drama of any kind, relational tension of any kind, setbacks, financial problems, it magnifies the pain also. does it not and know this in the next week god has ordained for many of you to be in the presence of the people

who should be the most important in your life and make no mistake your spiritual enemy will look to plant a seed of offense and rob you of your joy i uh we're going to talk today about how what bitterness is why it's such a problem and how to get free of it. Remember this. You cannot control what other people do. You can control how you respond. So what is the problem with bitterness? If you're taking notes, I want you to write this first thought down. The first problem with bitterness is that bitterness has a dangerous root. The author to Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15, writes this. See to it, church, that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble. I think it's interesting that he chose the word root to describe bitterness. Now, I'm a South Texas boy. And growing up in

South Texas, the holy grail of all trees that you would want in your front yard is a live oak tree. You'd have branches, 5,000 pounds each that would go horizontal to the ground, and it would withstand crazy winds when those things would happen. How does that, how is it possible the root system? What you do not see is that a fully mature live oak tree, if you take all the little and the big roots and you line them up end to end, they will span over one linear mile. Crazy for one little tree. And the author to Hebrew says, see to it that no bitter root. What you cannot see is slowly underneath the surface of the soul is growing deeper and deeper and deeper. See to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble.

Many of you have experienced hurt, disappointment, let down, lies. You may not even know inside of your own life that an offensive has taken root. Cindy and I were talking before this message, and Cindy's my wife, by the way. And I'm like, you know, I'm not bitter at people. I do not have a root of bitterness. And she looked at me, said, you are a liar. You do. And I'm like, well, please tell.

And she had a point. So there's one thing that I know that I struggle with, and then one thing that's a new revelation. The first is that I'm kind of a handy guy. I have a workshop. I have pretty much every tool you can imagine. It's not a competition, but I win. And in my shop, everything has its place. Like the screwdriver drawer is lined from longer ones to shorter ones, Phillips, to all the, it's all, it all has its place.

I hear it, yes, yes. I knew I was going to speak to somebody today. My sons don't share my value system of organization. They are more organic. in how to use my tools and how to replace my tools. So case and point, earlier this year, my 19-year-old is moving out, getting his own place, we're taking the bed apart in his room, and my Milwaukee Impact driver, that it's been missing for seven months, why is there a drill under his bed, right? I'm getting hives just talking about it right now.

I need therapy. So root of bitterness, without a doubt. So the second one, this is a new revelation. How many of you watch this show, This Is Us? Anybody watch that show? Most of the women, of course. All right. So, Cindy and I watched the show. And last week we're watching an episode. And one of the main characters' name is Jack Pearson.

And it occurred to me, every time we watch this show, we're sitting on the couch, and Cindy will lean over and say, he's just the best husband. He's so dreamy. Chris, you need to say something like that to me sometimes. I'm not okay with that. Gentlemen, I am not okay that we are being made look bad as husbands by a fictional character written by Hollywood writers who the actor, in fact, has never actually been married himself. Is it just me?

I feel so much better just talking this out. Therapy. The Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 13 says that love keeps no record of wrongs. bitterness keeps detailed logs of wrongs, detailed records. He hurt me, she misled me, they lied to me, they let me down. Bitterness will keep growing and growing and growing. And the longer you allow to live, church, listen to me, the deeper it grows and the harder it's going to be to kill.

Bitterness has a dangerous root. Secondly, write this down, bitterness has a poisonous fruit. I deserve extra credit for my points rhyming. I'm just going to tell you. Dangerous fruit, poisonous fruit, extra credit for me. The author of Hebrews continues. He says, see to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile who, church? Not you.

Many. See to it that no bitter root grows up inside. of you, the author of Hebrews knew that one person that is nursing an offense that allows that just live in the soul over time, the collateral impact of that one offense is widespread. We know this. One bitter person can destroy a life group. Some of you have experienced that. One bitter person can divide a family. One bitter person can make a workplace utterly miserable. And some of you are here thinking, I pray that so-and-so comes to one of these eight services at Life Church, Oklahoma City, because the Holy Spirit needs to speak to their soul. And to you,

I would say this, that bitterness is the hardest sin to see in the mirror because you feel justified in it. You know it. The only reason I feel the way that is the way. I feel is because of what they did. You feel justified to kind of wrap yourself around this close friend that you've become so accustomed to living with day in and day out. You wouldn't even know what life would be like without this companion called the fence. If we're not careful, some of us will come into a room like this and celebrate the love of Christ while hating someone else in our hearts simultaneously. And in fact, the Bible says, if you say you love God but hate your brother, in God's economy, that's impossible. If you truly experience the love of God,

you can't hate your brother. If we're not careful, some of us will, will freely receive the forgiveness of God, yet withhold it from someone else. It could be a brown-nosed or, work, a boss that doesn't appreciate you, a spouse that doesn't lift a finger at home. For some of you, you have a problem with you, don't you? Some of you are angry at God. We cannot heal from that which we are unwilling to first acknowledge. And so I just want to ask you today, better yet, I want you to ask God, in your heart, reveal anything God.

that is growing beneath the surface of my soul that needs to be excavated and healed by your spirit. So let's just get into it, church. How do we kill a root of bitterness? I want to read a text in Ephesians chapter 4. Then we're going to break this down kind of verse by verse. Ephesians 4 31 through 32. Paul writes, get rid of how much? Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger.

brawling and slander along with every form of malice. And then he kind of shifts the gear. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgiving each other just as in Christ, God forgave you. How do we kill a root of bitterness? First, write this down. You kill bitterness with compassion. We kill bitterness with compassion.

There's tension growing in some of you today because you recognize this offense that you've carried for a really long time and the fact that you feel justified in carrying it. And I just told you in order to kill that, you have to operate in compassion, even toward the person that hurt you. I need to clue you in on a little secret. The laws of heaven almost always are the opposite of your human nature. Jesus said, if you want to be great, serve others. Opposite. Somebody strikes you, you don't strike him back. You turn the other cheek. You want to kill the root of bitterness inside of you. Love. Offer compassion. In Romans 12, Paul gave a very similar teaching to the church in Rome. He said, do not be overcome by evil, but let's do the opposite.

Let's overcome evil by doing good. One of my favorite examples of this in our church is a woman named Monica Halada. And Monica is an amazing mom, incredible wife. She serves people in the church passionately. I believe we have a picture of her and Matt or husband. and if you look into her eyes, you see hope, you see joy. And that expression in her face is completely irrational for what she's experienced. If there is a person on planet Earth that deserves to hate the world, in my opinion, it's Monica.

She grew up in a home where she endured abuse of every imaginable kind. She became kind of the poster child of the DHS system, foster home to foster home. The abuse continued. At a pretty young age, she was pulled into human trafficking, where she became a commodity for sale. She was beaten more times than she can remember. Rate objectified, sold. And there was even a moment, she was telling me, story that she was in court for a crime and a judge looked at her in the eye and said,

you are an utterly worthless human being. Everything in her life reinforced what that judge said. She is worth nothing. God disagreed. And somewhere along her journey, she encountered Jesus and his love and his compassion. And not only was she courageous enough to let God start to heal the bitterness and the wounds she had toward the men that had abused her all of her life. But she took her past misery and turned it into a divine ministry. In this church, to this day, she is leveraging her story to pull women into a life of hope and self-worth, to remind them that you are not worthless. you are the masterpiece of God.

What do we know? What the enemy meant to destroy her, God will flip it. He does the opposite, and he turns it for good. We kill bitterness with compassion, being a part of the solution, not perpetuating the problem.

Jesus said it best in the gospel of Luke chapter 6, He said, bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you. Again, opposite. Do the very opposite of what your human instincts are telling you to do. Craig said this long ago. He said, the greatest form of compassion is to pray for someone who's done something really terrible to you. God, I pray they experience you.

I pray you'd soften their heart. I pray that they would know your love. And praying for someone else may not change them, but when you pray, it will always change you every time. We kill it with compassion. And secondly, write this down. This is going to get hard for some of you. You kill bitterness with forgiveness.

You kill bitterness with forgiveness. You're listening. to this thinking, you have no idea. And you're right. I don't. But God does. And Paul writes, get rid of all of it. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other. How God, do I do that? You forgive each other just as in Christ, God forgave you. You are, we're not generating something, you are passing along something you've already received. There's a big difference. How did Jesus forgive you, church?

Immediately, unwaveringly, generously, unconditionally. He hung on a cross not to pay his debt, but to pay yours and uttered three words. It is finished. And when he said that, he was thinking of you, thinking all the things you did, it is for the joy that he endured the scorn of Calvary's Cross so that you would be free, that you would be forgiven. I'm going to tell you something. One of the reasons we live in this perpetual cycle of bitterness is because we compare sin. We do. We compare what we've done against what others have done.

And we allow the fact that we haven't sinned as bad as someone else to say, well, I have a right to carry this. The word sin is an archery term. Did you know that? And it means to miss the bull's eye. To miss the mark of God's righteousness. By how much? By anything.

Look at the mile. They missed the mark by. But look at my millimeter. The thing is, the consequences on earth are different with the mile sin and the millimeter sin. They are different. But in the eyes of God, the mile and the millimeter are the same. When we miss the mark, it is sin.

And the penalty of sin is separation from God. And the mile and the millimeter both need the blood of Jesus, period. So we come to a place where we recognize what we have been freely given. How dare we withhold it from someone else? He forgave you freely, generously, absolutely, unconditionally. I want to give you a tip that might help this holiday season on taking baby steps toward offering grace to other people. Because you might be thinking, man, he's Jesus.

And I am clearly not. I don't know how to forgive. How many of you have ever played the game, the card game Spades? Anybody ever played that game? There is a card in that game that trumps every card. What is it? The ace of spades. When you carry a root of bitterness against someone,

you live with this 24-7. You hold this card against them 24-7. And you know you find yourself having imaginary fights with that person that are completely fictional, but they feel really good. What are you doing in that moment? You're playing the ace of spades. In your heart, you're holding it against them. You may sit across a Christmas meal with that person,

and everything in you wants to remind them of what they did to you. How do we take baby steps to forgiveness? So here's how. In this moment, I want to play the card, but I choose not to. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow or how I'm going to feel tomorrow, but right now in this moment, I choose to release them. They owe me nothing. And in the next moment, I choose to not play the card. I will not hold this against them.

I release them. And the next moment, and the next moment, and the next day, and the next week. And you will wake up one day with the frequency of those little moments of I choose not to hold. that against them and here's what's going to happen. What happened will no longer be an emotion. It will only be a fact. It will only be a part of history, but it will not be something that impacts your emotions. But it's one moment at a time of not playing this card against them. I was joking with you about how I really don't have a root of bitterness against anyone but television characters.

The reality behind that, though, is that for the better part of my life, I was, I have been the worst person I've known. I don't know anyone who's been worse than I have been. And I've got some pretty significant baggage. I grew up in a home where I longed for these I love yous and I'm proud of you's for my father that never really came. and it created this kind of vacuum inside of me, this sense of emptiness and inadequacy,

and I don't measure up, and I'm not worth anything. And that's, many of you have a wound like that. Many of you do. And when we have a wound like that, we tend to want to medicate it in any way possible. And so as a young adult, who then became a young husband, who then became a young pastor, that hole was still there, and I just tried to medicate it with things like pornography

and then infidelity, and I did the unthinkable. And I was unfaithful to that woman. And there was a moment in time where God by His Holy Spirit prompted me just to confess it all. Just confess it. and then I watched a woman who did not deserve to endure what she was about to endure. I just watched despair set in over her eyes, and I broke her heart. And the church rallied around us. Craig and Amy rallied around us.

This is many, many years ago. And then I saw despair become brokenness, and I saw brokenness, and I saw brokenness give birth to hope, and then I saw hope give birth the compassion. And then God just started working in our marriage, but the entire time Cindy Beale was carrying this. She had every right to remind me of what I had done to her. And in the last 16 and a half years of God healing us

and us ministering out of this brokenness, that became restoration, they became a miracle. Not one time has this woman ever played this against me. Not one time has she ever used what I did to throw it in my face to hurt me. Not once. And I asked her years into it, how is it even possible that you have not just in a moment of emotion said, don't forget what you did? and she said well i wanted to almost every day and and then i was gently reminded

that i may not have had a a mile sin but the millimeter that i committed last week or yesterday or the hour before that needed the blood of jesus too and how could i receive what jesus gave me and withhold it from you and i believe that our marriage is what it is today because forgiveness was received, but it was also freely offered. And I'm here to tell you, my heart is breaking for many of you. Because some of you believe in God, you believe in Jesus as a forgiver, but you are not free, and you know it. You are in prison to this man. You are imprisoned to this memory, this offense. You can relive it, you can rehearse it, or you can just release it. Someone once said, to forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was me.

I pray that God, by His Holy Spirit, set some of you free today. God, we come to you, deeply aware. of what's been done to us. God, we ask that you would give us by your spirit the ability, the courage to not play the trump card against that person, to release them of their debt to us. God set hearts free. I know there's a lot of emotion right now for some of us. And I'm just going to boldly and courageously ask you to be courageous. There's some of you here that you know.

know you are you are at a brick wall in your faith until this root of bitterness is killed excavated and destroyed and your prayer today is god i'm going to just be honest i need you to heal this offense that i have carried for a really really long time if that's your bold prayer just lift your hand right now i just want to see you i lift it up lift it up lift it up hands all over this place god i pray by the power of your holy spirit god that you would heal wounded hearts. God help us to have the capacity to release those who we hold the debt against. Allow us to release them. Allow us to forgive them. And God set us free. As we continue to pray, sin is real. Sin is missing the mark of God. Paul.

taught the church in Rome that all have sinned, every one of us, you included, we have missed the mark of God's righteousness, his holiness. And the penalty of sin, here's the bad news, is death, is eternal separation from God. But the good news is not news, it's a person. The good news is Christ. God knew our predicament. He knew there is no way. We, in and of ourselves could make, make it right. None of us could be good enough to compensate for how we've missed the mark of God's standard. So he sent the good news, who is Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life, died on a cross to pay in full your debt. But it is not enough to just know this intellectually, guys. You have got to receive it in your heart.

You have to accept what Jesus did as payment for your sin. Scripture says to as many as have received Christ. There is an action there. To them, he gives the right to be called children of God, even to those who believe in His name. For those of you that are here today, and you know it. You're not right with God. He is not first.

This is your moment. This is why you're here. You are here to say yes to Emmanuel, the God who is with us and the God who wants to forgive you. you. What do you do? You call out on his name and you confess your sin with heads bowed and eyes closed. That's your prayer. I want you to boldly lift your hand right now and meet me eye to eye. Keep it up until I see you sweet girl right over here in the middle, right here. Praise God for you. I see you. Way in the back. Welcome to his family. I got you right over here.

Praise God for you, brother. Got you too. God loves you. Others of you. Your hand lifted high over here way in the back. Welcome to his family right here in the middle section. Others of you, Jesus, I surrender. I give you my life. Church, we pray today with those saying yes to the gift of grace and freedom. Every voice in this room praying out loud with me. Father, I need you. I have sinned. I'm asking you to save me.

Jesus, I believe you died on a cross you did not deserve to pay for my sin. And you rose from the grave to bring me life. filming down with your Holy Spirit that I could serve you always in Jesus name I pray can somebody go nuts and celebrate the goodness of a grace giving God I just want to say thanks again for joining us here

at Life Church as always it's our heart to help you take your next steps in your relationship with Christ and we have a great way for you to do that it's simple to remember it's life.church slash next there will be met with all kinds of resources to help you take that next step in your faith journey. Again, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.